


read between the lines

by callunavulgari



Series: Heather's Favorites [32]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 04:10:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3636186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With a smirk, Axel leaned in towards Roxas, elbows planted on the table. “So let’s do something spontaneous. Come take your roadtrip with me instead.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	read between the lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Conigliomannaro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Conigliomannaro/gifts).



> For my dearest Lisa. Happy birthday! Sorry this is late, I meant to post it earlier today between shifts, but uh, ending up working a thirteen hour shift. I didn't even get out until midnight. But yes, I managed to use the road trip prompt while simultaneously wriggling the other one in there too. Hope you enjoy! :)

“We’re out of cigarettes,” Axel tells him a couple dozen miles past the Nevada border, his nose wrinkling as he flicks the still smoldering butt out the window. It goes whirling past and Roxas watches it go with a detached consideration that stems from complete and utter boredom.  
  
“No, we aren’t,” Roxas replies once the cigarette is out of sight. He shifts his feet onto the dash. If they crash, he’ll probably break both ankles, but it’s this or maintain the same uncomfortable position he’s been in for the last four hours. And considering that there’s jack shit around them except sand, cacti, and maybe a few tumbleweeds, he’ll take his chances. “I stashed a carton in the trunk when we left the last town.”  
  
Axel glances at him, one eyebrow raised.  
  
Roxas shrugs. “You smoke like a chimney when you’re driving and we were about to head into the desert. Figured it best to be prepared.”  
  
“Such a boy scout,” Axel teases, drumming his fingers idly on the wheel.  
  
“Hm,” Roxas agrees wordlessly. There’s no use denying it. Sora taught him well.  
  
He turns his attention back to the world spinning by outside the window, but the scenery hasn’t changed much. The desert was interesting for the first few miles, with its endless stretch of golden sand and the mirage-esque shimmer of heat in the air, but after a hundred miles or so, it’s lost its appeal.  
  
It _is_ a pretty sight though, the sun hanging fat and bloated on the horizon. The sky a smear of gold and red. It’ll turn to pinks and purples soon, but for now, it’s like the highway is taking them straight into the sun.  
  
“When the sun sets you should pull over,” he mentions offhandedly, right as Axel is getting really into the guitar solo of whatever old school rock playlist he’s got playing. Roxas is pretty sure it’s Def Leppard, but he can’t be fucked to care enough to either ask or dissect the lyrics.  
  
Axel shoots him a confused look. “Why?”  
  
“I’m horny and could use a good fuck,” he explains with a shrug, snorting when the car jerks a bit too far to the left. Axel recovers quickly though, so Roxas decides against giving him shit about it.  
  
When the silence presses on though, he has to turn his head to make sure that Axel hasn’t slipped into some kind of functional coma.  
  
He hasn’t. There’s a blush high on his cheeks and he keeps sneaking Roxas these shy little looks, but he’s perfectly okay. He’s just… quiet.  
  
“What? It’s not like we haven’t before.”  
  
“Yeah.” Axel coughs, and fumbles around in the center console until Roxas takes pity on him and passes him the last cigarette in his pack. Axel lights it with a sigh of relief, smoke hissing out past his teeth. “But uh, you were kind of drunk. You didn’t say anything so I just assumed it wasn’t something you usually did.”  
  
“What, fuck guys?”  
  
Axel gives a jerky little nod.  
  
“You’re an idiot.” Roxas sighs. “Just… pull over when the sun goes down.”  
  
.  
  
Roxas doesn’t remember much of his first meeting with Axel. The whole night is a blur of color, sound, and the taste of tequila, even weeks and hundreds of miles later. He has a very distinct memory of his tongue licking salt off some girls stomach and singing a little too loudly when someone had queued up what seemed like the entirety of _In Bloom_ , but that was pretty much it.    
  
He _does_ remember waking up the next morning, neck smarting something fierce from sleeping on it wrong.  
  
Roxas had made it to the toilet before he realized that he wasn’t in his hotel room. It had sparked a twinge of concern, but that had passed quickly as he did his level best to vomit up everything he’d ever eaten.  
  
It might have been four minutes in that bathroom, but it felt like hours until his stomach felt settled enough for Roxas to pull back and rest his sweaty brow on the cool porcelain rim.  
  
He’d staggered back out a good fifteen minutes later, after making use of one of those complimentary hotel toothbrushes and rubbing a bar of soap under his arms. He’d been tempted to shower, but just the idea of standing upright for that long had made him dizzy.  
  
Only, the bed that he must have stumbled out of earlier seemed to be occupied.  
  
The guy lounging half naked in the sheets was good looking enough — red hair, slim, nice face — but nothing about him pinged in Roxas’ memory. His eyes were also open, narrowed into slits and watching Roxas calmly.  
  
“Did we fuck?” Roxas blurted out, not panicked, not yet, but getting there. It wasn’t that he didn’t like guys, because clearly he did, but well. He tried to avoid fucking people he wouldn’t remember the next morning. It was a courtesy thing.  
  
The guy laughed. It was rusty sounding, as if he'd gargled glass the night before. Or chain smoked a dozen cigarettes before choking on some fucker’s dick. Hell, maybe he choked on _Roxas_ ’ dick.  
  
“No,” the guy croaked, stretching slowly. The sheets shifted down his hips, giving Roxas a pretty fantastic view of the trail of hair leading down past the waistband of his boxers. “You tried to punch me in the face and knocked yourself out on the pool table.”  
  
Roxas gaped at him. “So you just decided to take me home with you?”  
  
The guy gave him a look — eyebrow arched, lips pursed — that was _all_ judgement. “Better than leave you unconscious on the floor, don’t you think? Besides,” he added with a snort, gesturing to the room around them. “‘Home’ is the Motel 8 a block away from the bar.”  
  
“Why’d I try to punch you?”  
  
At that, the guy has the decency to look a bit sheepish. “I may have grabbed your ass on accident. That was my bad.”  
  
Roxas stared at him a little longer, then sighed. “Fine. You’re forgiven.”  
  
The guy flashed him a blinding smile, pillow creases on his face and hair an absolute wreck, and said, “Good. So hey, I’m Axel. Figured you probably don’t remember.”  
  
“I didn’t,” Roxas said. “I’m Roxas.”  
  
Axel’s grin widened. “So, Roxas. How do you feel about breakfast?”  
  
.  
  
They go northwest at Sacramento and head up the coast to see the redwoods, because it’s that or take the I-5 south to Los Angeles and just, no. Roxas might have been on the road trip to end all road trips with an almost stranger, but he wasn’t going to be that kind of tourist. Give him huge ass trees and a stormy coastline over crowded beaches any day.  
  
They stop for lunch just off of Highway 101, spreading the smelly old blanket that was hiding in the back of Axel’s car out on the grass beneath the trees, munching on stale potato chips and gas station sandwiches.  
  
“Fine dining,” Axel says at one point, leant back on one elbow to peer up at the canopy above them. The gray-white brightness of the sky has turned Axel’s eyes a pale green, so light that they almost look blue.  
  
Roxas watches Axel take a bite of his turkey club and thinks of the line of hickies leading down his neck, a step ladder of bruises that go all the way down his torso. They’ve still got a shit ton of lube and at least half the box of condoms. He could push Axel down right now, toss his sandwich off to the side for the birds to feast on, and hop on his dick. Axel wouldn’t protest. It wouldn’t matter that they’re barely past the treeline and someone could easily see them, because in the past few days, they’ve both discovered that they’ve got a moderate to major exhibitionism streak.  
  
He could, and it would be great, because sex with Axel is the kind of mind blowing that Roxas has been looking for his entire _life_ , but at the rate they’re going they’ll be broke from the cost of condoms alone sooner rather than later.  
  
Plus, Roxas is kind of enjoying this — the birdsong all around them and the sight of Axel sprawled out in the grass, bones loose and pliant. Neither of them have washed since they left Sacramento and they’ve both got that weird unwashed car funk going on. Axel’s shirt is wrinkled and stained with what might be ketchup, but he still makes a pretty picture.  
  
Roxas lays his head down on his balled up hoodie, downs the rest of his sandwich, and closes his eyes against the sunlight. Axel will wake him when it’s time to leave.  
  
.  
  
The diner that Axel took them to was a hole in the wall place that just screamed failed health inspections, but the wait staff was cheerful and the pancakes were good, so Roxas ignored his rich boy sensibilities and dutifully munched away.  
  
“So, what the hell brings a kid like you to Oklahoma?” Axel asked eventually, pushing his hashbrowns around his plate.  
  
There was a part of Roxas that wanted to bitch about that, a 'kid like you', but he was tired and hungover. And, Axel was buying him breakfast, so he bit his tongue and shrugged.  
  
“I got dragged along on my brother’s road trip.” His lips quirked into a rueful smile. “It hasn’t exactly been the escape that I was looking for.”  
  
Axel cocked his head, lips pulling into a frown. “What were you looking for, exactly?”  
  
There was a jukebox in the corner of the room, one of the really old ones that never played anything more recent than Elvis, and one of the waitresses had just put on Heartbreak Hotel. She stayed there for a minute or so, talking with one of the nearby table, her hand tucked up against her hip.  
  
“I don’t know,” he said, when the burn of Axel’s stare had gotten to be too much. “I just wanted something different. You just, everyone always talks about escape. About getting out there and doing something with your life. And that’s cool, I guess, but I’ve lived in the same town my whole life. Everything’s just… stationary. Unchangeable. I’m going to college fifteen minutes from the house I grew up in. I just… wanted to do something spontaneous, I guess.”  
  
Axel quirked a brow, deftly handing off his glass for a refill when the waitress stopped by. “And this road trip of your brothers wasn’t spontaneous enough for you?”  
  
Roxas shrugged, taking a mutinous bite of his bacon. “Every detail of the trip was planned. Right down to the goddamn playlists. I wanted something different and I ended up with the same monotonous shit, just with a bonus change of scenery.”  
  
“It ended with you knocking yourself out in a bar. That usual for you?”  
  
Roxas snorted. “So far you’ve been the most interesting thing to happen to me.”  
  
Something flashed across Axel’s eyes. Amusement, mostly. But there’s curiosity there too, and more than that, there’s interest. With a smirk, Axel leaned in towards Roxas, elbows planted on the table. “So let’s do something spontaneous. Come take your roadtrip with me instead.”  
  
Roxas blinked. There were all kinds of things wrong with that, stranger danger being first among them. But the idea had some merit and the part of Roxas that’s been aching for something new and exciting sits up and takes notice.  
  
He should say no. Roxas should thank Axel for the pancakes and march his ass straight back to his hotel room and make up some story when Kairi and Sora ask where he was all night. This could be his adventure — just this — that night he knocked himself out trying to deck some dude and woke up the next morning in his bed. But that’s not enough.  
  
Instead, he’d considered Axel for a moment, then said, “Okay.”  
  
.  
  
They smoke a couple joints with some hipsters in a small town just outside of Seattle. They’re a good group, and one of the girls offers them her couch for the night when they mention that they’ve been sleeping in the car since they left California.  
  
“It’s pretty small,” she says as she leads them inside. “The water pressure’s great though.”  
  
The shower _is_ small and contains a small army’s worth of organic shampoos and soaps, but the water’ is warm and the pressure is absolute heaven on Roxas’ sore muscles. Axel waits for him to finish, sitting on the toilet seat with a towel wrapped around his waist, and humming whatever indie song they’d been playing at the party earlier. He’s a little tone deaf, voice slurred whenever he remembers a lyric or two, but Roxas appreciates the noise.  
  
The house is too quiet. After the last few weeks, Roxas has adjusted to the noise of the night, and being inside again is foreign. Unsettling.  
  
He emerges from the shower in a cloud of steam and Axel gives him a slanted, inebriated grin, pupils blown wide. Roxas goes willingly when Axel pulls him in, perching delicately on the other man’s lap and hoping that he doesn’t end up falling off. It would be pretty shit to knock himself unconscious all over again.  
  
“Mmm,” Axel hums, lips dragging against the damp skin at the hollow of his throat. “You smell like teen spirit.”  
  
“No, I don’t,” Roxas snorts. “I smell like _Happy Hippy_.”  
  
Axel bites down on his clavicle. Roxas gasps, his hips snapping forward.  
  
“That’s what I said.”  
  
“Pretty sure you just paraphrased a Nirvana song, actually. But don’t worry, I won’t tell.” He pauses, a thought occurring to him. “Do they even make that deodorant anymore?”  
  
“Dunno,” Axel sighs, grinding slowly up into him. It’s a steady, effortless thing, like Axel is just doing it because it feels good rather than actually angling for sex. Roxas doesn’t know why, but that sort of makes it better.  
  
“Couch?” Roxas asks a few minutes later, when Axel’s eyes are starting to shutter and his movements have gone sluggish. Axel agrees with a wordless hum, allowing Roxas to maneuver them out of the bathroom and to the wide couch that takes up a good portion of the living room.  
  
Axel drops bonelessly onto it, making grabby motions until Roxas follows him down, his heart swelling with affection. Axel leans up and mouths sloppily at his neck, making a grab for Roxas’ dick. He misses. Within seconds he’s asleep.  
  
Roxas rolls his eyes and shifts them around so that Axel won’t wake up with a dead arm the next morning. He presses his lips to Axel’s temple and breathes in the smell of grapefruit and jasmine, closing his eyes and letting Axel’s heartbeat lull him to sleep.  
  
.  
  
Roxas wasn’t an idiot. He might have broken into his and Kairi’s hotel room while her, Sora, and Riku were out to lunch and stolen his stuff just to avoid talking to them about it, but he’d left a note. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have a cell phone.  
  
The second night that he and Axel spent together, Roxas had gotten drunk off of cheap booze in the passenger seat, and crawled into Axel's lap the second that they pulled into a rest stop.  
  
“I don’t really think we should—” Axel had started to say, his voice shaky and torn as his cock hardened under Roxas’ hand.  
  
Roxas had leaned forward, lips dragging against the shell of Axel’s ear, and laughed. “I’m drunk, but I’m not that drunk, man.” And when that didn’t work, he’d whined, arching his body into Axel’s touch, and said, “C’mon, man. I wanna feel your cock.”  
  
They hadn’t gotten around to full on fucking. Roxas was too drunk for that kind of car sex, and the space was pretty cramped anyway, so they’d settled for handjobs and a bit of frottage.  
  
The next morning, Roxas had woken up to a twinge in his lower back from sleeping with his body angled over the center console, licked his gummy lips and looked at Axel.  
  
“I need some water and a toothbrush, stat,” he’d said, grimacing at the taste in his mouth.  
  
Axel had blinked and said, “Okay.”  
  
He started the car.  
  
.  
  
From Washington, they take I-90 east despite Axel’s insistence that they try to sneak into Canada. They spend most of the day driving, bantering back and forth over the stupid trivia book Axel picked up in Oregon, and fighting over the radio.  
  
Somehow, they end up in Yellowstone. It wasn’t intentional, exactly, but Roxas is happy about it anyway. He’s always wanted to visit the place, ever since he did a report on the super volcano hidden beneath it in middle school.  
  
It’s late, so they chip in for a Bed and Breakfast just outside the park and spend the night fooling around and eating room service.  
  
The park itself is bigger than Roxas expected. They see Old Faithful, because they can’t _not_ , and hike their way up some of the trails. Around two, they get lunch at one of the few restaurants nearby, and by the time they’re walking out, full and happy, Roxas feels bloated with emotion.  
  
“This feels like a date,” he tells Axel, leaning over to accept the bite of ice cream that Axel offers him.  
  
Axel, because he’s an asshole, smears ice cream onto his nose. “It could be, if you want it to.”  
  
Roxas thinks about it. “Yeah, I think I do.”  
  
“Dating isn’t too boring for you?” Axel teases, leaning close and throwing an arm around Roxas’ shoulder.  
  
Roxas snorts. He feels sloppy with affection, warm, and _loved_. Maybe jumping into the car with a stranger was a pretty stupid idea, but he’s glad he did it. It could have gone so differently. Axel could have been a rapist or a serial killer, but instead, he’s just… Axel.  
  
And Roxas loves him.  
  
“You’re still the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to me,” Roxas tells him, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun. It feels too honest, but he’s not going to take it back. “I don’t think you could be boring if you tried.”  
  
Axel smiles — a small, pleased thing that’s just for Roxas — and leans in for a kiss.  
  
“Just wait,” Axel whispers against his lips. “Sometime soon I’m going to have to meet your parents. That’s when the adventure really starts.”  
  
And Roxas, who has been dreading the thought of returning back to his monotonous, boring life, thinks that with Axel at his side, maybe they will make it into an adventure.


End file.
